Stress Center Peer Support

Hi, Ive been reading the posts on here for a while and have found them a great help. I am a mum of 2 and I guess my anxiety stems back a long time but I have always been an extremely anxious mum! I worry about everything and anything! Anyway around xmas time I had a problem with my eye, which caused me to have my first proper panic attack as I thought it was something much worse and in my own head I had diagnosed myself! I was anxious and panicky and claustraphobic (something that ive had since my daugher was born!) all day everyday for around 2 weeks until I found out my eye was getting better and it was not something awful like a brain tumor! Anyway since then I thought i was ok and then I started getting horrible irrational thoughts which I could not get rid of and this is when I realised from coming on the boards it was ocd thinking and i have always had a bit of ocd, checking and stuff like that. I am doing a lot better now with the thoughts, but since they started when i was at home I am still really struggling in my own company and when I am at home in the day and my eldest is at school and im at home with my youngest, its like i feel really lonely and i dont want to think! I need to overcome this, im usually such a confident person that can cope with everything, although I get anxious!!!! Anyone have any suggestions??

It would be very beneficial for you to continue to read the OCD posts and there is much history that you can get off the forum as well.

If you could get the program it would be something you could work on on a daily basis and would take some of the loneliness out of our day just knowing that you are working on the problem. You are obviously struggling because of your thoughts. You will learn to allow your thoughts to come and go without your emotional attachment to them. Emotion is what keeps thoughts coming back over and over. Our resistance to them is the problem. The thoughts themselves have no power over us.

Practice observing your thoughts. Just allow them to come and go. Don't talk back to them - just watch. There is nothing more you really need to do. When you no longer resist them they cease to bother you. They come less often and with less impact. Learn to make it OK for those thoughts to be there. Use your breath to keep you present. Whenever thought tries to grab you (and it will) just bring yourself back to your breath. Notice the in and out of it. Breathe slowly. Not necessarily deeply, but slowly. The deep breath will come.

thanks boon all your posts are really helpful and uplifting!